Tag Archives: Caliber 40LRC

We are down to the last few things to do on Snowaway before we splash into the ocean on Wednesday. We spent yesterday morning working on our outboard engine “Hons”, a Honda 9.9 HP four stroke. Hons got his oil changed, both engine and transmission oils. As well he got wings installed to help prevent Dutchie, our dinghy, from digging the stern down in the water; in other words, it will help keep us drier and more comfortable. Since our dinghy is very important to our lifestyle, we do anything we can to keep it functioning! One item that we never liked on our Caliber was the microwave oven. Caliber does not include an inverter on the boat so the microwave can only be used when we are connected to shore power in marinas. And the marinas in the Caribbean use 220 not 110 V so we cannot connect to shore power here! We have been using it for storage of our mixing bowls. We ordered a door from Caliber last year and so we removed the microwave and installed the new door. There is room for our cookbooks as well as a storage bin – much more useful! The boat yard has adopted several cats over the years. We were told last year that a long time cruiser had built this lovely house and tended to the cats. As new strays appear, the cruisers pay to have the cats spayed/neutered and they get fed twice a day. Karen has agreed to do this chore for the next week (of course it is not much of a chore…).

We are looking forward to being on the water; there should be more cooling breezes so it should be more comfortable.

I guess we will be in Calgary until the end of October. Richard got a 4 week contract so we will not be able to leave early for our road trip.
We realized why we like to go sailing for the winter months, on our Thanksgiving weekend it started to snow. And we realized why we named our Caliber 40LRC “Snowaway”!! Here is a picture of our house in Calgary taken on October 14th, about 5 inches of snow has fallen. We are definitely looking forward to getting back to Trinidad on November 3rd.

We are still in Calgary buying boat parts (it is a never ending task) and thinking about heading back to Snowaway, our Caliber 40 LRC, which is on the hard at Power Boats yard in Trinidad. We have a flight out of Houston on November 3rd. We are considering driving to Houston and enjoying the National Parks along the way.

We have just returned from a visit out west, as far as Vancouver Island, to reconnect with relatives: Richard’s sister and her husband (Netty & Brian), his sister-in-law and nephew and his family (Heather, Nathan, Darlene, Kendrick) and Karen’s brother and sister-in-law (Maurice & Pam). Maurice has been redesigning our web page into a blog style and we thank him for all his work! We hope everyone is enjoying the “new look”.

We have spent a week getting Snowaway, our Caliber 40LRC sailboat, ready to leave for the hurricane season. We stayed at Crews Inn Marina to clean the boat. We hired a Trinidadian to wash and wax the boat but we did the sails ourselves…

The haul out was at Power Boats yard and it was pretty painless. The only concern was that we had to remove our forestays to allow the boat to be lifted out of the water.

Once Snowaway was at her “home” for the summer, we had the bottom of the boat power washed to remove the minor growth that had developed over the past few months. We had some minor modifications done to the boat while we did the final cleaning on board. The most significant was the installation of a rolling furler on the inner forestay. Of course that meant that we have to have our sails recut from hankons to furlers. We also decided to have some cushions recut and a cover made for “Dutchie”, our dinghy. Power Boats are managing these contracts for us and ensure that the work is done and paid for.

We did not have time to explore Trinidad but are now ready to fly home. We had to buy additional bags to take home all our cold weather gear as we don’t expect to need it for the next few years.

We will be returning returning to Snowaway on November 3rd. At that time we will spend a few weeks getting Snowaway ready to launch and hopefully spend some time exploring the island.

November 4th was the big day for the launch of our boat. It was very traumatic to watch the crew bring in the travel lift and move her to the water, more so when we learned that the travel lift operator was a trainee! The lift was not that large so they had to remove the forestay for the lift. Richard walked along side the boat as it was moved to the water.

Once at the water’s edge the boat was slowly lowered into the water. Triton Marine Services then ensured that all the through hulls were water tight before releasing the lift. She was then tied up to the dock for final inspection before being moved to Deerfield Marina where the final “toys” are to be installed.

Deerfield Marina is on the ICW at mile 200 (mile zero is at Norfolk Virginia).